By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

“Sharing Christ’s Gifts,” the archdiocese’s Millennium Campaign, did more than bring financial resources to parishes, said campaign leaders. It also uncovered reservoirs of people just waiting to be asked to get involved.

“There are all kinds of people in every parish who are just waiting to be invited to help,” said Auxiliary Bishop John Gorman, who served as the chairman of the pastors’ steering committee. “When someone asks them, they say ‘Sure, I’ll help.’ That’s the key to evangelization—inviting people.”

At the same time, the campaign educated both pastors and parishioners about the meaning of stewardship instead of simply asking them to open their checkbooks.

“Stewardship puts everything in the context of faith,” Bishop Gorman said. “We’re not owners—God has sort of entrusted things to us. So the motivation to give back is kind of a response to God’s generosity to us.”

By measures both financial and spiritual, the campaign was a success. It had exceeded its original goal of $200 million by early February, with 19 parishes yet to complete their fundraising. Ray Coughlin, director of the Office for Stewardship and Development, said he expected the total proceeds of the two-year campaign to reach $230 million.

Most of that money will stay in the parishes where it was raised. Each parish was asked to raise at least as much as it usually collects in a year; 20 percent of that amount was to go for archdiocesan needs, and anything above that was to be used for parish needs.

Keeping most of the money in local parishes helped pastors sell the campaign to parishioners, Bishop Gorman said, but so did the emphasis on stewardship instead of fundraising.

One of the benefits is the positive feeling the campaign left in many parishes, instead of the atmosphere of “scorched earth” and bitterness that high-pressure fundraising campaigns leave behind, Coughlin said.

“This campaign was very low-key, and the emphasis was not money, but participation,” Coughlin said. “When we did that, the money came, too.”

Some pastors reported that 30 to 40 percent of registered parishioners participated in some capacity, whether by making a few phone calls or making a pledge. It worked by asking parishioners to evangelize one another.

“One of the successes was the way it was outlined, the way it got more and more people involved,” Bishop Gorman said. “Then those people got more people involved.”

Of course, that process was labor-intensive, especially for pastors—some of whom had to be sold on the idea themselves.

“It’s always difficult with something new,” the bishop said. “When they saw how much work it was, their first reaction was ‘Holy Smokes!’”

But most pastors were eventually won over by those who piloted the campaign before its official start and reported good results, he said, almost the same way parishioners got other parishioners to commit to the campaign.

Now the challenge to pastors is to keep their newly active parishioners involved, he said. “With that, it’s still to early to tell,” Bishop Gorman said.